Rethinking HR

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It might seem that we have it in for human resources. An article in our April issue urged companies to scrap a cherished HR practice: the forced ranking of employees. And this month our Spotlight advocates rethinking HR from top to bottom. It’s not that we don’t like HR; it’s just that we believe it can be improved.

Juniper Networks, in Silicon Valley, is already doing so. In “Bright, Shiny Objects and the Future of HR,” John Boudreau, a professor at USC Marshall School of Business, and Steven Rice, a former executive vice president of HR at Juniper, describe how the company created an innovative HR operation that delivers exciting, consistently business-aligned results.

The remaining piece in the package, “People Before Strategy: A New Role for the CHRO,” is a collaboration by the influential business adviser Ram Charan; McKinsey & Company’s global managing director, Dominic Barton; and Korn Ferry’s vice chairman, Dennis Carey. They contend that companies need to take HR more seriously and should make the chief human resources officer a true strategic partner of the CEO.

From the Visual Library

Job Losses Over Six Recessions

Actual, Estimated, and Ideal Pay Ratios of CEOs to Unskilled Workers

Swapping Value for Data

Meanwhile, the transformation of our website continues. I encourage you to take advantage of our newest offering—the HBR Visual Library, an online repository of graphs, slide decks, and even cartoons. Subscribers can view the images, save them to their own online libraries, download them to share with colleagues, and adapt slide decks for customized presentations.

And if you’re a registered user and you visit HBR.org during July or August, you’ll have unlimited free access to the Visual Library and our archive of articles.

Check it out. And let us know what you think.

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review.